Abstract

Most of the current studies on causal reasoning have focused on the acyclic causal relation. An acyclic causal relation is one in which event A causes event B, but B does not affect A. However, there is another type of causal relation. In a cyclic causal relation, event A causes B, and at the same time, B affects A. Popular examples of the cyclic causal relation can be found in situations such as "vicious circles" and arms race between nations in conflict. The present study aims at examining how ordinary people understand cyclic causal relations. A major finding was that, unlike an acyclic causal chain, people did not include all the related events as the cause of a cyclic event. Instead they often chose one event ignoring ocher causally relevant events. Other findings and the implications for current models of causal reasoning are considered.